


Retrograde

by effielee



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8981029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/effielee/pseuds/effielee
Summary: Told from Seven's perspective as he becomes Saeran's caretaker. A year into Jumin's marriage, a ghost from his past reappears resulting in a moment of infidelity. In the aftermath, MC (Naree) vanishes, leading him on a journey to pick up the pieces of their relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

In the summer of my 22nd year, Naree returned to Seoul and crashed into our lives the way the asteroid changed the landscape for the dinosaurs, blasting through the atmosphere and into the earth, flinging debris into atmosphere, blocking the sun.  Choking out photosynthetic life and igniting firestorms that incinerated even the mighty T-rex.  Explosively disrupting the previously established order of my world, when I realized what had happened, I stood in the ruins of an old world struggling to find stable footing.

Maybe it would’ve been more apt to compare Naree’s presence to a comet, more of a sign of foreboding to ancient people than one of immense destruction.  Regardless, at the time, Naree, named after her mother’s favorite flowers, returned to because she was scheduled as a soloist with the Seoul Philharmonic.  She was regarded as a musical prodigy, to the surprise of no one since her father was also a successful violinist.  Sadly, her family never saw her graduation, her father and brother passed away in a tragic car accident when she was 6, and her mother died in her last month of school.   She studied to become a music therapist shorty afterwards-perhaps out of guilt- she immersed herself in music, dividing her time between practicing and providing therapy in the psychiatric ward. 

Naree was always an enigma to me- simultaneously charming and friendly, yet reserved and indifferent.  She could easily laugh and play along with my jokes, but just as quickly become somber, as if the energy from a moment ago had evaporated in the wind.  She was uncannily inquisitive, seeing through the façade I had built and that alarmed me.  She’d lived the last few years with a closed heart, offering advice but never accepting it.  In that sense, the two of us were very much alike. And like how Jumin and I devoted our lives to our work, she played music like it was the only thing holding her together.  Likely because of this similarity, she connected with us the easiest.

Oh, I’m forgetting the most important thing.  Jumin loved Naree, and she became the new center his universe revolved around.  In the instant he saw her at his doorstep that faithful day, Jumin fell in love.  As if he were walking down the street when bang! A flash of light hit him and blinded him for three days.  Something akin to a religious encounter, she stayed by his side while he recalibrated, invigorated with new eyes and a fresh perspective.

A businessman through and through, he had an inborn quality that commanded respect, with his sharp words and good looks, he almost always knew what to say and he would say it with poise—it had magnetic pull on people.  His eyes were piercing and his aura chilling, ruthlessly pragmatic and as demanding with others as he was to himself.  I never saw him outside of his business suits, I doubt he even knew that jeans came in different washes.  Despite mostly joking around with him about Elly to piss him off, Jumin was always sincere in his words and actions with the RFA.  Talking to him though, you get the sense that you only spoke to the most superficial layer of him. Something deeper inside him had hardened over the years, like cement that had been left out to dry. 

Though I joked about his sexuality, I had heard that while Jumin never had anything you’d call a lover, V did mention that he enjoyed female company from time to time.   Given who he was, I couldn’t imagine it would be too difficult.  I couldn’t picture any of those relationships being substantive though, Jumin was much too guarded and aloof. 

“To be perfectly frank, sexual desire has me baffled,” He once told V and Rika, making a sober face.  This was after our first party, I believe; after we had a number of drinks.  “You know- how it all comes about.  What’s your take on it?”

“Sexual desire’s not something you understand,” V replied, verdant eyes furrowed, struggling to explain something so primal, “It’s just there.”

He scrutinized us for a while, as if we were aliens explaining a wholly foreign cultural practice.  Losing interest, he stared up at the ceiling, and Rika elegantly changed the conversation.  No use talking to him about that, she must have decided. 

I might as well come out and say it, I was in love with Naree.  I was attracted to her from the first moment I saw her on the CCTV.  From the first phone call where we made eye contact through the camera for the first time, I knew there was no turning back.  For a while, she was all I could think about as I checked the security camera.  I pushed her towards Jumin though, I had no idea how to deal with those emotions, and I thought, like always, pushing away would make it disappear. But somehow, my actions and my mind didn’t connect.  I found myself logging into the chat more hoping she was there, or calling her in hopes of hearing her voice.

But this was for the best, I decided.  This conviction was solidified when I found Saeran and Rika at Mint Eye and when V explained everything—I was too dangerous for her. Rika was secretly placed in a private institution, with V spending most of his time there as her caretaker.  I exposed the intelligence agency I worked for when they refused to let me quit, devoting my time to nursing Saeran back to health.  It wasn’t easy and V eventually persuaded me to at least let Naree provide music therapy for Saeran.  She agreed on the condition that V finally undergo a cornea transplant to regain his sight, to which he complied.  All’s well that end’s well.   

After she and Jumin were married, I slept with a number of people. At moments, I felt the intense desire to hold a body in my arms, someone with no consequence whom I couldn’t hurt.   Anyways, when I slept with girls, I thought about Naree.  It was a dishonorable thing to do, thinking of someone’s wife, but I couldn’t help myself.  I thought of holding her petite body in my hands, running my fingers down the curve of her spine, brushing strands of dark hair out of her bright eyes.  A deep-rooted emptiness would seep into my body, the air I breathed became viscous and suffocating, salty sea water stung my lungs, the glare of the monitors scattered and diffracted into bubbles that danced in front of my eyes.  Once, I went fishing out at sea with Naree and Yoosung. It was an unusually quiet day, our boat floated solitary on the water, still like a plane of glass that extended into the horizon. I tricked Yoosung into believing fish were biting on his rod, and he somehow managed to fall into the water, fishing rod and all.   Choking down her giggles, she comforted him by describing that falling in love is a lot like falling into a river.

“One where the current is overwhelming, sweeping you into the water with no chance to fight it,” She said, traces of laughter lingering in the tone of her voice.  When we asked her to elaborate, she paused for a moment,  fingers fiddling with the ends of her hair, choosing her words with great care. “It’ll carry you off somewhere you’ve never been before.  A new, unfamiliar place.  It might be dangerous, where you might get hurt deeply, irreversibly.  You could lose everything, but there’s nothing you can do.  You’re powerless against the current.  Even if it means you’ll be corroded into nothing, consumed and gone forever.”

In that moment, I thought she was setting up love as some grand journey, an adventure to uncover the truth at all costs.  And like a lonely comet streaking through the sky heralding things to come, she turned out to be correct.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seven talks about taking care of his bro, adopting a cat, and reading a letter.

My years at the agency were pretty much a waste. 

Initially I was excited to be free, but it hit me, for the first time in my life, I was alone.   Completely and utterly, alone.  My entire life, even before Saeran and I were conscious, we were inseparable.  I was him, he was me. But now, my other half was on the other side of the world.   I thought of him constantly, was he looking at the same sky I was? What was he feeling? Was he happy?  Even after Rika sent me the floppy disk, these questions plagued me. But as I looked into his youthful smile preserved in those still images, I felt like I had lost my bearings.  There was no returning to him -I’d bidden that world farewell.  The thing I defined my life around was happier without me.  Even if I disappeared without a trace, he would continue to be happy.  It brought me relief, but also a numbing emptiness.

The only thing good that came out of my time with the agency was the RFA. Oh, and Honey Butter Chips and my cars, I concluded.  I never spoke of this honestly to anyone, not even to myself.  The only person who could see through this was Naree, but she never pressed the issue.  With Saeran back in my life, I assumed that I would naturally become whole again.  The loneliness would disappear because, obviously, I wasn’t alone anymore.  

Naree would visit twice a week, playing music for Saeran.  He was always much calmer after she visited. Perhaps it was because she never intruded on his space or made him talk, all she did was play music for him.  At the beginning from another room, when he couldn’t bear anyone getting close. In silence, he would listen to the music, body limp and eyes hazy like someone had sedated him.  After a while, sometimes he drew or petted the kitten we had adopted. We had found her on our way to get ice-cream, abandoned on the side of the road in a tattered cardboard box.  Large yellow eyes that stared back at us, we both decided to adopt her. She was a small cat with white fur, lined with grey and black stripes that ran down her back.  Her distinguishing feature was black patch under her nose that resembled a toothbrush stache, and so we affectionately dubbed her “Hitler cat”.  Needless to say, we desperately needed a new name.

“I know! ‘Mein Fuhrer’.” I joked.  Naree groaned, while from the other side of the room Saeran rolled his eyes.

“Well, what about you? How’d you get your name? It means Lily… it’s pretty common for little girls.” I asked, honestly curious.

“They’re my mother’s favorite flowers.” She replied.  She watched Hitler cat energetically paw at Saeran’s hand. He had completely checked out of the conversation. “I hate them….Do you know when you get lilies?”

“Baby showers?”

She froze for a moment, pondering something.  Then, as if tucking that thought into a cabinet at the back of a dusty room, she grinned a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and continued. “For once, God 7 is mistaken! It’s quite the opposite in fact.  You gift them at funerals.  My mom’s funeral was filled with them since everyone knew they were her favorite.  There were so many flowers we hardly had room for them by the casket.” Her voice was oddly chipper for the topic at hand.

 “It’s in the past now, you’re not alone anymore. You have Jumin! Look forward instead, memories are just memories.” I said, trying to change the subject and lift the mood.

“He says the same thing.” She sighed, but she continued with conviction. “But think about it, almost everything you know about people _are_ memories.”

“Memories, the past, I guess thinking about them can give you direction.  But what’s done is done, and if you get stuck there, they tear you apart.”

“They’re like a strange sort of fuel, aren’t they?  You can’t ignore them, but you can’t dwell on it.” She paused to tuck her hair behind her ears. She had a penchant  to pause and think before she explained those lofty thoughts of hers, like a conductor with their hands up, orchestra at the ready, an aura of suspense as everyone held their breath. 

“Sometimes I think that people are floating in their own space shuttles.  We’re all heading in different trajectories, some of us have destination in far away places, some of us orbit around the same object our entire lives.  Our ships are all made differently, but memories are the thing we burn to stay alive.  Good memories, bad memories, it’s all just fuel we burn to keep existing in space.  Some people burn everything, but some people cling onto a few and refuse to burn them.  But the fire doesn't care.  Greek philosophy or the most graphic porn, the fire’s not thinking “what a great ass” or “Socrates really stumped him good”, its all just lumps of coal.” 

I looked at her, digesting what she had said.  A million thoughts buzzing in my head, I imaged people in their ships floating around in space, methodically picking and choosing which coals to burn as they looked outside the windows of their shuttle into the infinite expanse of space. 

“Laika.” I blurted out.

She looked me confused, the galaxy reflected in those clear eyes. “The Soviet space dog?”

I nodded. 

“For a Hitler cat to have a name from one of the most memorable moments of the Soviet regime is a bit…”

“Says the one who married a raging capitalist.  Ironic jokes are the best jokes!” I grinned, but from the corner of my eye I saw Saeran glare at me from across the room.  With the image of shuttles and rocks floating around in space, another name popped into my head. “Okay fine.  What about Rosetta, after the Rosetta mission.”

She smiled, “Yes, Rosetta!” she repeated.  From the other side of the room, I saw Saeran nod.

Even now, sometimes when I’m petting Rosetta, the random image of someone shovelling coal into a 20th century style furnace to power a futuristic space engine always amused me. 

When Naree wasn’t around to calm Saeran, he was a wild card to me.  We lost the connection we once shared as children, I didn't know how to comfort him anymore. He would have episodes of manic anger, anxiety, or violence, flinging anything he could find at me.  I removed any sharp objects from the house and he never left my sight.  When he realized he couldn’t kill me or himself, he slumped further in a deep depression.  I didn’t realize that by existing, I could hurt someone else this deeply.  If nothing else, I wanted to correct that wrong before I left this lonely planet. 

“I’m tired.” He confessed to me and Naree once. It was an early summer night, the beginning of typhoon season.  “Of everything- the pain, memories, this body, this face.  No one will miss me when I’m gone.  You know why? Because I can’t show love.  Why is that? What is it anyways?” 

I knew he was asking a rhetorical question so I stayed quiet.  In the silence, I heard the faint drumming of the raindrops against the house. After a moment, he continued, “People show love through simple acts. You take me to get ice cream, you play songs from composers I like.  People learn how to love by being loved by someone else.  But I’ll never be able to accept myself, and therefore, I won’t ever be able to accept you.”

Being with Saeran, it felt like a knife was stabbing my chest.  And in those moments, his words twist that knife deeper into my core. An awful, debilitating pain that felt like it was cracking my hollow body in two.  But strangely, I’m thankful for it.  That frigid pain proved my existence- a lump of coal I was unwilling to burn.

“Hey, have you every felt confused about what you’re doing, like it’s not right?” I asked Naree as she was packing up to leave. She'd always been one to take care of how she presented herself: her shirts were always pressed, she wore contacts, and her makeup was natural but deliberate.  But that day, she wasn't wearing any makeup and her shirt was abnormally wrinkled. She looked obviously bothered and distracted. organizing her backpack over and over again with meticulous care.   

Under her glasses, dark shadows were visible under her eyes and faint freckles sprinkled her cheeks, “I spend more time being confused than not.”   

“Honestly?”

She nodded, her lips in a small frown, an contemplative look on her face.

“I’ve hardly ever felt lost like this before.  Not that I’ve always had absolute conviction in my life.  I know I’m selfish and haphazard type person.  But never uncertain.  I’ve made mistakes, but I always knew that rationally, I was on the right path.” I confessed.

“People are irrational though, even with the right solution, it won’t 100% make them better.  Loving someone means you have accept things that are illogical.”

Without intending to, I raised my voice in exasperation, “Jumin operates on logic! His entire being is rooted in the empirical and measurable! I’m not like you, I need to accept things that are illogical and painful.”

When those words left my mouth I immediately regretted them.  “I’m sorry.” I apologized quickly, looking at my feet. “If…if I don’t believe that what I’m doing will bring him back, I’ll fall apart.”

“I understand, really, I do.”  Her voice was fatigued and distant.  She dug into her coat pocket and passed a neatly folded pamphlet to me. “But Luciel, you need time for yourself.  I’ve mentioned this before, but give it a serious look. It’s only a few days long, I think being in nature would be good for him as well.” 

“Alright, I’ll consider it.”  I took the pamphlet, looked into her eyes one last time.  They looked like part of her had already left the room and turned off the lights, and without further words I waved farewell and collapsed on the couch.  The sight of her violin slung over those small hunched shoulders and her dim eyes were the last things I saw of before I was gripped by a deep sleep. 

My nap was one of those rip-van-winkle style hibernations where I didn’t know what century I was in when I woke up.  My eyes were blurry without my glasses and the house was uneasily silent.  The type of uncomfortable silence I could hear and feel, a dull ringing that echoed inside my head and the foreign feeling of cotton balls jammed up my ear canal and down my throat.  I went to the kitchen to get some water, and I noticed that Saeran was asleep on the other couch.  His back faced towards me with Rosetta curled up beside him.  His hair had grown out, a hint of silver on the very tips of his hair.  On the counter, there was a piece of paper, probably a letter.  It was made of thick luxurious feeling paper and scribbled on it was neatly written cursive written in deep black ink, unmistakably Jumin’s writing.  Curiosity got the better of me, and as I took a sip of water, I started to read.

_No words adequately explain the damaged I’ve caused to you, or explain my circumstances.  This letter is the closest I’ve gotten to explaining my feelings, I’ve lost track of time trying to write this.  After all that’s happened, I still have the audacity to ask for your patience.  If nothing else, please know that I still love you, more than the day I first met you._

_I have always thought of myself as an honest person.  I have my faults, but I have never tried to deceive you or lie to myself.  I’ve always lived in the present, what’s in the past means nothing more than memories to me, so I never talked about it. But this part of me, I struggled share with you.  For almost a year, I waited for the perfect time to tell you._

_Details will hurt you, and hurts me as I’m writing it, but I believe that an honest, comprehensive account will be best for us.   As you’re aware, the relationships with the women in my life has always been simply transactional.  It was easy to see in their eyes- you looked like a commodity.  But her eyes are different, like she saw through me and what was on the other side, like I was half a human. She saw what had frozen inside me, the tangled threads, I mistook that look as understanding.  She was my father’s girlfriend when I was in my first year of university.  That summer, I left with the sense that I had been profoundly polluted.   She explained that if I could find a physical outlet, my emotions would follow, like a river pouring into the ocean.  When she touched me, it was like she was unscrewing old screws from the joints that held me together.  When we had sex, it was like I was being thrown off a building.  The pain was intolerable, but the pleasure was just as unbearable. I felt myself split in two that day, my body cracking cleanly down the center, I felt my rib cage opening like the door to a bird cage.  My memories and consciousness were stretched into thin threads, looping around my organs in place of connective tissues. She extracted my insides one at a time, like beads on a rosary.  At the end of that summer, I felt like half of me had vanished and I had been rebuilt with the remainders.  I never came back until I graduated, she existed only in my memories, in the past, and so I never saw her again until three days ago._

_What I did was as far from ‘love’ as I can fathom, there is no emotion shared between her and I.  It was all physical, I was 19 again, my insides lined with kerosene and set afire.  It was suffocating.  How she invoked this reaction in me, or why this need even arose in me so violently I haven’t the faintest idea.  But understand this, my heart never left you for a moment.  The sex I had that night was something akin to madness, I was rolling in hot mud, the flesh on my body melted off my bones, my mind was sucked and emptied into a vacuum._

_The years before I met you, those were the frozen years, made of disappointment and silence.  Where my feelings were shut inside me and solidified. I lived life with half of myself for so many years I had forgotten what it felt like to feel whole again.  Being with you, I knew I was getting closer regaining the part that she had taken away.   I know, for us both, it wasn’t easy for us to build something out of nothing.  We have a tendency towards solitude, we throw ourselves into our work when we are troubled.  Still, one brick at a time we built up this space called ‘home’.  We practiced thinking and feeling things together, what we would normally accomplish alone we learned to deal with it together.  I thawed in your presence, words were meaningful when they reached your ears, those knots that had been tangled and tightened were slowly becoming unraveled.  We weren’t always successful, but even in the biggest mishaps we forgot about them in each other’s arms._

_After we visited your family’s graves, we went about our lives avoiding mention of it for a few weeks.  We both new it was an impossibility but we still danced around it.  While your played your music, I could sense that you were thinking about something else.   You had something you wanted to say, something essential.  Do you remember? That day when you finally released your feelings, when you held my shoulders as you cried.  You briefly mentioned your profound sense of loss and loneliness, your frustration at your inability to find the right words.  I think about it constantly, I thought we had all the time in the world to find those words. But I was wrong, time is our scarcest resource.  Maybe, had I been more persistent in finding those words with you, or had I told you everything in my heart before, things wouldn’t be this way. Whatever my words were, and your words where, they were more than either of us had the courage for._

_I sincerely hope these words reach you. If nothing else, I want to speak with you in person about our next steps._

_Love,_

_Jumin_

I read the letter again, Jumin’s elegant lettering blurring into one another by the time I had finished re-reading.  I opened the fridge to grab a can of Dr. Pepper and threw in some rum for the hell of it, stuffing the letter back in the envelope.  It had never occurred to me that Jumin and Naree had any hint of marital problems.  They were incredibly private people, with clearly defined public personas, and from the outside they looked perfectly happy.  I sat there shocked, not quite feeling anything. If I was Zen or Yoosung, I would’ve been outraged.  If I was V or Jaehee, I would’ve asked for clarification.  But I stood there, watching the gentle rise and fall of Saeran’s shoulders as I finished my cup, the rum heating up my esophagus as it trickled down.  It appeared Jumin had no intentions of starting divorce proceedings, it seemed he was fully intent of mending their relationship.  It also appeared the Naree left the letter on the counter for me to find, it’s not something you forget.  Their relationship was strange, and some of the letter made little sense to me.    The more I thought of Jumin’s affluent yet isolating upbringing, Naree’s loneliness and loss, the stranger it got.   I was peaking into a different world, one which I wasn’t sure I had been invited too.  Another world where a 19-year-old Jumin was wondering around confused and betrayed, and in this world the other half of him was gripped by an overwhelming logic-defying physical desire.

I thought the rum would help me process what I had read, but it just made my thoughts more frenetic and unorganized.  I left the letter on the counter where I had found it, and left her a message.   I figured, with such an important letter, she would come back tonight or at the latest tomorrow.

My phone was silent for the rest of the night.  When it finally did ring a week later it was not Naree that was calling me, but Jumin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The holidays happened and I got distracted.


End file.
